


The Moroccan Diaries

by Goldragon (thebookhunter)



Series: So long ago and out of sight [3]
Category: Led Zeppelin
Genre: Drug Use, Fictional autobiography, M/M, bit of thelema, but it is slightly touched upon here, classic arabic homoerotic poetry IS extremely hard to come by, cosmic sex, i hope that's alright, i'll never write about the wives because i don't know their minds and hearts at all, if it's not given willingly i won't go into it, maybe i'm not searching well, queer issues, real men as mythological figure, those poems are genuine though, thoughts about family, unapologetically going to tricky places, when you take the legends of rock thing literally, with my deep respect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25379800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/pseuds/Goldragon
Summary: In 1975 the band was at its absolute peak, the Black Dragon was at its mightiest, and it was the apotheosis of the Golden God.That year, Jimmy and Robert travelled to Morocco.It wasn't their first trip alone together, but it was many weeks long, and it left a deep, enduring mark. When they reunited for Page/Plant in the mid 90s, this is the place they chose to find their groove again. Not many years ago, Robert did the thing he does of telling the press he wishes they would go again, Jimmy and him. (Just pick up the fucking phone, old man.) (NO! I'll make an entire album instead!) (Fine by me anyway. I love that album.)Very soon after that journey in 1975, disaster struck in the form of a near-fatal car crash which left Robert wheelchair bound for months. He recovered, but things were just not the same after that.These diaries are an attempt to explore what it was like in Jimmy's heart and mind in those days, before everything started to fall apart, as well as some terrible, ominous hindsight from his present-ish self, who knows what happens in the next chapter.I've taken inspiration for the mood and some of the ideas from Achilles Last Stand, and whatever liberties I needed for the rest.
Relationships: Jimmy Page/Robert Plant
Series: So long ago and out of sight [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700926
Comments: 24
Kudos: 27





	The Moroccan Diaries

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if anyone kept any diaries and, apart from a rough itinerary Jimmy was so kind as to provide in one of his "On this day" entries recently, I don't know much about that journey. I have made a point not to investigate, actually. 
> 
> As for the events that followed, they haven't been thoroughly checked at all. I stopped trying to figure out the details when I bumped into my third contradictory account. I don't know whose version is closer to reality, so I decided not to stick to any, and brush over the facts roughly. They're not the point anyway.
> 
> So you might find "mistakes" and inaccuracies that differ from the version you've heard, but like I say, that's really not the point of this. We're not here for the details and the facts; we're here for the legend and the myth and the heart of it.
> 
> As always, I've developed a lot of this in our cahooting with Ledbythreads, and even stole some stuff from Leds directly. I know Robert would approve. (And Leds too cuz I asked.) 
> 
> *Whimsical punctuation and underlining to convey a bit more that journal feel.
> 
> ONE LAST THING, PRETTY IMPORTANT. I've gone places in Jimmy's mind and beliefs which might make some of you feel uncomfortable. Let's make this clear first of all: I'm not speaking through his words, and he doesn't voice my opinions on any subject, except how beautiful and amazing Robert Plant is. 
> 
> I'm trying to create a sympathetic portrayal, I'm trying to understand and articulate. There is no underage sex in this work, but it's mentioned. There is no condemnation either, because this is supposed to be a private journal. So only come on board if you're okay with looking at things through (fictional, Bookie's own) Jimmy's eyes.

He knew exactly where he would find them. Leather bound, yellowing pages, fading ink, and trapped in between, tattered postcards and scraps. Jimmy skims through the pages. He knows there’s pain in there for him, but it’s irresistible. The immediacy of it, it brings it all back so sharply. 

There’s a few pages from Robert’s own notebook too. Jimmy rescued them from a bin in Rhodes. 

Robert didn’t protest. He’s always left it to Jimmy, the archival work; he carries the luggage so Robert can travel light. He guards their legacy, so Robert doesn’t have to.

It’s alright. It’s the task he appointed himself. Keeper, guardian, curator. Faithful. Devotee. He wouldn’t trust anyone else with it, especially not Robert.

If only Robert was a bit less obnoxious about it, not so self-satisfied and so vocal about moving on and leaving the past behind, always ready to make a big show of how vexed he is by any mention of his own glorious younger self. That young man gave you everything you have. Those men were geniuses in a state of grace. Their covenant birthed the future. Robert may resent their long shadow, but to Jimmy it's no burden at all. And since the shadow is indeed long and thick, he’s the fortunate one.

Robert’s handwriting is a thing of beauty.

_Days went by when you and I_

~~Walked~~ _Bathed in eternal summer glow_

_As far away and distant_

_Our mutual_ child ~~would~~ _did grow._

The sun in his eyes, oven-hot air in his face, the smell of that particular kind of dust, the drone of those long hours driving, the long treks. Hand in hand to help each other up steep hills, under the skies. Hand in hand in the street, where people with dark faces and bright eyes could see them.

In between all the thoughts about music, the band, other people, the strange, wondrous life they lived, thoughts of Robert. But so rudimentarily expressed, gosh. - Jimmy can be more charitable about his own lack of eloquence in those days than he was when he sat down to write them, and derived from it only frustration. He’s not entirely hopeless at it, expressing himself in writing that is, but with Robert he always did struggle. He grappled with words and ideas, his own mind stuttering, twisting around itself, inhibited, so much to say, so many layers to get through. He couldn’t lower his guard even on pages only he would ever see. The uglier things, the embarrassing things, the dangerous things. He couldn’t even trust himself with his own secrets. He simply wasn’t able to. Walls built themselves and shut him in. - Then again, he might not have put it down in words, but it’s all there in between the lines. 

He loved Robert deeply but feared the idea of him. And teetering in that impossible balance, there was a reckoning in that faraway place, along that journey. It mattered enormously. They thought they knew how much going there, but life has a way of outbidding you, doesn't it? 

For all the difficulties Jimmy encountered confiding and opening up in those diaries, he locked horns with it, kept trying; he was thinking surely of all the times he had given up on it and later regretted it. All those moments lost. Just passing thoughts and feelings, not much perhaps, but for that instant, sheer dazzling life. All those minute sparks of life so bright, then gone. - Words like pressed flowers. Their color has faded, their scent is gone, but you have retained some of it with you, a reminder. Time slips between your fingers, the present does not exist. Love waits for no-one. Desire doesn’t belong to us. It’s useless to pursue them or try to conjure them up. They’re given and taken away by forces one cannot control. But memories. Memories we make. What we make, we own. You can hold them in your hands. You can treasure them. Is that not mercy? Is that not bliss? - He says Jimmy’s haunted by the past. Well, Robert’s hounded by it, forever trying to outrun it. 

They were so happy there. The last time they were truly young. Reassured in who they were and in their union, they almost succeeded in making peace with their divided lives. Because of those days, to an extent at least, they felt able to reconcile with the present and all its tyrannies, because they trusted the future. They thought they could always go back to that place, to that freedom. They truly came to believe no power on heaven on earth could ever come between them. 

Jimmy doesn’t look down on those kids, their arrogance, their hubris. They were fearless, and foolish, and beautiful. If he was transported to the past and appeared before them like a vision, even then he would hold back his omens and his warnings. Leave them be. 

To the young man struggling with words and emotions and himself, if he was sitting before him now, he has nothing to tell him, absolutely nothing. Life is inevitable. It breaks you. It kills you a thousand times. If not the tragedies they faced, there would be others. No, he has nothing to tell them. Let them hold on to their own wisdom. Let them live fully, let them keep the faith just a bit longer. 

Instead, those kids have much to tell _him_. The tale of those days, the shape and nature and beat of their love as it was then, poorly articulated perhaps, and faded, its scent long gone, but in Jimmy’s hands. They _were_. _It was_. It’s still singing from all the way back, far away. 

I love them, Robert. Those young men we were. No matter where I am, how long it’s been, this love won’t ever leave me. 

_We should go there again,_ you say. But I do already. I do. And you’re with me there, we’re together. We will never be as happy and young and beautiful again. But we were, once, and there is proof of that. It is here, right here, in these old hands.

* * *

_Marrakech, ... May 1975_

We held hands in the souk.

We were headed for Kasbah Mosque. It was early morning, the streets were packed. It was very difficult to get through. We kept losing each other, he would disappear in the crowd, I would see his crown of gold shimmer above the sea of dark-haired people. I called him to wait for me. He reached back and he held my hand so we would stay together.

Then we were in the square, fewer people around. We were in the open, and he was still holding my hand. He turned to me and smiled. I had been wondering if he’d realised, if he was aware. His eyes were aflame, sky blue, fierce. Of course he was aware. Of course he was.

Everywhere here we see young men with an arm over each other’s shoulder or around their waists. We’ve been doing that too, calling each other “habibi”, giggling and snickering like it was a joke between us, as if we were putting on a costume and playing a game. This was different.

I knew it would mean a lot to him. I didn’t realise it would mean so much to me, this small gesture of defiance. And I know this is still nothing. It’s an illusion. We are still hiding, here. But just look at him. - Well, he always makes the most of things. His cup is always overflowing. He doesn’t second-guess his blessings. Always a silver lining, and most times he just puts away the rest, and proclaims the silver lining is the only thing that matters. And persuades himself of it. If there are voices of protest in his head, as there must be, it quite seems as if he refuses to listen to them. They don’t burden him. He is truly blessed. - I would envy him bitterly, but instead I bask in his light. That’s my blessing.

We took the longest way we possibly could to the Mosque. We kept walking, as if this was to be our only chance. We wandered hand in hand just for the sake of it. It was so hot, our palms were sweating, but I did not care. I was happy for him. I was happy for myself. I had not expected it. This is not real freedom, but I found it a good likeness, provided you squint your eyes a little, so to speak. We deal in illusions in so many aspects of our lives, why not this? Have your illusion, Robert. Make it real with your conviction, as you always do. Real only to him and me, perhaps, but present, tangible, like the hand he was holding so tight. I suppose there is more than one way to be real.

He was right about this. I’m glad he was.

_Marrakech ... June 1975_

We’ve been out buying things for the family before we leave for the south. He was excited, laughing with the vendors, trying his hand at the bits of Arabic he’s picked up, a quick study for the sounds of language. Men take to R so fast. They may like him most, but they respect me. Among other things, because I haggle. - It’s a show of deference, Robert. Respect for their ways and their culture. He’d just throw money at them, whatever they ask for. He shakes his head at me and rolls his eyes. Mumbles _Led Wallet_. - And I smile and adore him.

Silver and turquoise jewellery for M and C, a doumbek for K. For us, kaftans and gelabahs, white headscarves, leather slippers, leather belts. It all reeks of camel and goat and I wrinkle my nose at it. He teases me and kisses my cheek, and men only smile at us, not a twitch of shock or disapproval. It’s just what kids do around here, what young men do, it’s the way. - Seems so easy. - Why is it so easy here and so impossible there.

He said he likes me to be the one to haggle and pay because it looks like he’s my kept boy, and apparently that’s amusing. It is amusing. It’s hysterical. “Kept boy.” As if that was possible. - Keeping him, that is. He comes and goes at will. I dare anyone to try and hold him where he doesn't want to be.

While he chatted the vendors up, enchanted them, I made myself busy looking for something for Ch. It all seemed like cheap trash to me. I didn’t find anything I wanted to spend money on.

She would like it here. The pyramids of spices and the rugs wall to wall floor to ceiling, the painted ceramics, the brass, the beads. She’d buy a shed load of stuff, fill the whole house with it.

I’ll never bring her here.

I was feeling quite desperate when at the last moment we spotted a perfume shop. There were delicate blown glass bottles in whimsical shapes, sturdy cut rock crystal, very beautiful. The scents were very concentrated, too powerful, too heavy, rose and jasmine and bergamot, real musk. I still bought several for Ch. Too strong to use, really. They’re just for gifting, for owning. “Look what he brought me from Morocco.”

-“You did remember me then” she said that time. More than she can imagine. Not for the reasons she’d like, I suppose. Ghosts in our bed, next to Robert and me. Not quite in between, but hovering. You leave the shackles behind but you take the sore markings of them everywhere. - I supposes that's a terrible thing to say. Cruel. I suppose one should be constantly horrified at the depths of depravity and malice and selfishness one hides inside.

Well not quite malice, not quite evil, but rather like a beast without conscience or any meekness of civilisation at all, which knows only its own wants and needs, no empathy, no self-sacrifice, no generosity of any sort. We dress it with moral codes we derive from philosophy or religion or ethics, we learn for our own good not to let it rule our lives. But it’s always there, and many times one will find its call undeniable and irresistible. Sometimes the rewards for indulging the beast are too sweet, and those of denying it not at all. It’s funny how we call the things the beast does “being human,” as if our natural, true condition was some sort of angelic, blameless form, pure generosity and selflessness our humanity betrays. I believe we are born as that beast and build the human around it, with varying degrees of success. And oftentimes we let that veneer fall to reach for what the beast wants. We will tell ourselves and whoever asks that our instincts overtook our good sense. But they don’t. We choose to disregard the one and give into the other. We always have a choice. Our cruelties are our own. 

I never lied to her. She’s much too clever anyway. She knew what she was getting into. She knew about the other women anyway, and isn’t that enough. - We’ve never discussed R.

I don’t feel guilty. - I say that, but here I am, writing about it.

I bought oud scent for R when he wasn’t looking, to surprise him later. I haven’t given it to him yet, and I won’t at all if he doesn’t stop soon being so annoying. Once he was done browsing and I was still picking stuff, he got impatient. He realised whom I meant it for, and said they were too fragile, that it was impossible to get them there in one piece, that I should not bother. He was a right nag, as if determined to make me give up on buying them.

I ignored him, so he got in a huff. He’s a spoiled brat. – I suppose I should be appalled but I’m not. He has the nerve to get jealous, and I have the nerve to be pleased about it. More than pleased. Delighted.

Marrakech, ... June 1975

We spent a long time at Jemaa el Fna today, perhaps too long, considering the sun was on our heads and how hot it was. Time and heat and the drone of the music and absolute focus, I suppose I fell in a kind of trance, which is after all what Gnawa music is all about.

After some time, we were acknowledged and welcomed. They had realised I had my eye on the technique. The sintir fascinates me: a bass plucked lute, three strings, goat gut. Camel skin on the playing side. Plucked downwards with the knuckles side of the index finger and the inside of the thumb. The hollow body resonates a percussive tone created by the knuckles slapping the camel neck top of the body while plucking the strings. The lower string is a drone note. The second string, highest in pitch, is tuned an octave higher. The third string a fourth above the drone.

After a long time, our heads were quite fuzzy and we judged it best to go get something to drink and eat and seek some shade. Before we left, I asked Robert to ask the men if they knew of a good luthier in the city, and how to find it. (The look of dismay he gave me - how the hell do you say 'luthier' in Arabic. Made me laugh.)

We had mint tea at a terrace near the square. So concentrated and sugared it's like pudding. In moderation, it's delicious.

We spotted some tourists. Pasty white Europeans with sunglasses and fedora hats, in white, sweaty, wrinkled linen suits. Some even have their boys with them, sitting beside them. In the daytime, in full view. Everyone looks right past them. Nobody makes a fuss. - Still, it seemed quite a lot less seedy when Burroughs talked about it, though he didn’t mince his words. It was the nostalgia, I suppose. It has its own attraction, this sort of thing, but one quite far removed from freedom and certainly from the sublime. Either that, or he and I have very different notions of what those words mean.

We didn’t stay long. It was too hot to eat anyway. I had a headache.

It took us a very long time to find the luthier. The directions weren’t very easy to follow, as the Medina is full of narrow and twisty streets and Robert’s Arabic only stretches so far. But it was very worthwhile. The shopkeeper left us to it for some time, to look around, which in itself is unusual for this place, where everybody hovers and urges and presses stuff towards you. He was a special sort of man, I believe. I even tried to talk to him myself. Well not quite talk, only address him. Sintir, I said, but I wasn’t saying it quite right, I suppose. I pointed, and he said something that I could not understand and it confused me. After listening closely and asking something, Robert said he thought the man was not saying anything in particular, simply using a different name for it, guimbri, which I knew of, but I had not recognised it because of the way he said it. Things became easier after this.

The goat skin looks like parchment, yellowish brown and stained, and the body is carved by hand, so they all have sort of a worn-out look. It’s a primitive appearance I quite like. The man invited me to try them, and I tried to apply what I had observed. He was surprised I suppose that I knew what I was doing, and approving, and he picked up another to better show me how, correct my fingering and even my posture. He showed me how the metal rings can be used best. He taught me a few riffs (I don't know whether that's the right term for it.)

I did try an oud, which are more refined and sophisticated and their sound resembles more a Spanish guitar, with a different resonance. I did buy one, but I bought three sintir. ( “ceenteers” “Ghembree” “Gheembree” -- this is more or less how the man pronounced the words.)

All the while, Robert waited patiently. He too asked the man a few questions at first about the bendir (behn-deer) and the doumbek. In the end he didn’t purchase anything. Instead, he watched me acting like a kid in a candy shop. I showed off for him a bit, with the oud I was more able to. He of course realised what I was doing and he was far from annoyed.

I get a thrill from feeling him watching me, listening to me play. His whole focus on me, a hot stare, wanting me right there and then - It gives me a sense of security, one of the few I can call on, considering how little I control this, or him, or myself when it comes to this. It’s all so slippery, he’s so slippery, so restless, everything draws his attention, everything seduces him, he flutters about, falling in love twenty times a day, with a face, a body, a voice, a laughter, a sight or a sound. But when I play, it’s almost like I yanked a leash. This I can do better than most, and this is the stuff Robert truly lives on. He laps it up. I’m the piper. I hold power. Only like this do I feel there is a leash at all. But there is. He put it on himself, and handed me the other end. 

As we walk back to the hotel, with him helping me carry two of the four instruments I ended up purchasing, I think how beautiful my new treasures appear on my most precious one. There is a leash, indeed. But I don’t hold the other end. It holds me.

(later)

I don’t write about these things. I still feel like I shouldn’t. How does one write about it anyway? Too crass or too flowery, no good either way. But I want to remember it. Everything. I want to grasp it and capture it and keep it. I wish I’d kept a diary when we first met. I wish I had written down every first time we had there. I wish I could read precisely how it felt then, when I still knew nothing at all, no hindsight whatsoever, seeing him for the first time, hearing him for the first time, fucking him for the first time. 

I sent for milk (goat's I think) and a tea set, a little stove, white spirit to burn, cardamom pods. Crumble two pinches of blond hash between my fingers and stir it and heat it carefully. I like the ritual of it. Rituals matter. We’re not animals. 

Press the gold-rimmed glass to his lips. Feed him from my own mouth. I lick what’s dripping down his neck, down his chest. He’s sweet with it now, while his salt stings my tongue and the cardamom in the milk makes him taste like this place. He’s so pliant. Surrendering. He gives and gives and I take. It feeds me in turn, his force, his humility, his beauty. On his lap, we kiss slowly. Brush my lips on his mouth, his eyes. 

It will be a while to take effect. I play for him. Just fiddle really. He lies on the rug and listens. How he observes my hands. I play to ply him to call to him. It’s a persuasion, a seduction. My strings vibing with his energy, building it up inside him. That’s his drug. This is what he gets high on, what really gets him off. Sounds music beauty running through him electric. I saw it grip him from the very first second I saw him perform. Those jerky moves, almost convulsive. Like zapped by electric shocks. That was the music. Turns on his soul. He calls it love but his own kind of love. Look at him lighting up a sun child reaching. Fire in my hands and him made to burn. When he started to sing that first time like fire from his mouth. Elemental power in that boy. I play for him I make love to his soul. He lies there feeling me through the air. We’re sinking in now. Milky sea we’re blind when we go deep enough we’ll see with new eyes. It’s dark there but he’s fire. I swim to you. I play for you. 

We’re high. He’s higher. Staring at his hand where the silver and gold I’ve given him sparkles with the afternoon sun, turning it this way and that. He says something about fish scales. Flat hand waving over the rug, intricate patterns in rich red brown black green.

I play for him, he dances with his hands. Smiles with his eyes closed, in bliss. God the beauty of it is beyond telling. 

He crawls to me with dozy eyes entranced. Leans his head on my knee, as if he’ll feel the vibration in my thigh. Drawn to it to the source. I can’t play like this so I stroke your hair and you say you still hear it. Your face on my crotch. You say you hear it here. I think I can still hear it too. burnt sky, burnt earth, salt fields, white heat. You white and silver and gold. All the boy stripped out of you to reveal the god, the sacred beast. You strip with your eyes closed, shedding your man costume unthinking, only rings and bracelets and necklaces remain. You belong in a temple. A flock of priestesses should bathe you in rose water and anoint you with oil and put flower crowns on you and lay you down on an altar to receive the god or their worshippers. Through you all the divine blessings.

I don’t know how long I watch you. I am your altar. On my lap facing out, like the guembri lean on my chest, mine, I’ll pluck your strings and beat your body and make you vibe. Stroke and tug and press and pinch, sigh hiss moan sigh Jimmy Jimmy. 

You spread your legs for me, offering, tempting. Asking. Begging. I spread you further with both hands, - when you offer I always demand more. You never deny me. (When you don’t offer I never ask.) Press the flesh between your balls and your arse. It’s nothing at first but it will build up. You're impatient, I pull your hair and hush you and you know to be still and wait. Your breath starts to break. Your body seeks my hand on you but you know better than to ask.

Stick my fingers in your mouth, you suck them with greed. It has to be spit, my love. Right now it has to be from your body or mine. I circle my fingertip on it, pry you open, persuade you. Watching every twitch of your face like a hawk. Beautiful like this. Let me in, let me in. I can’t stop looking at you. You’re magnificent. I know how it feels, my finger burning you like spices in your mouth, you bite your lip and I would die for you. You turn your face moaning between kisses you’re crushing me and I stab more deeply and hook inside you. you’re only half hard but your breath so deep, it breaks, I take it off you lips I swallow it down it’s life itself I’m eating. You’re given so thoroughly. you want more, you want it faster and harder, you beg with your eyes but hold your tongue, and I’m intoxicated with it all, the absolute surrender. You'll take what I give you exactly as it's given. I possess you entirely, even your will.

You’d never come dry before? It goes on forever, I know it feels like it’s surging from so deep within, I have you arching against my chest like you want to flee from me, and your hands clawing in my thighs like it’s an alien force trying to tear us apart and you will fight it literally tooth and nail. You call my name you sound scared.

You’re shivering in my arms I hold you to my chest tight, I hush hush hush you. On my lap curled up like a babe in the womb, your head on my shoulder. I cradle you. Come back now. Slowly, slowly. I've got you. I've got you.

Your musk is on my fingertips when I press a cup of tea against your lips. 

  
  


Later. On your knees, looking up to me, your mouth swollen, your eyes hazy, spit makes your chin shine. Holding myself, tracing your lips, you stick out your tongue and I use it. Tiny shivers where we connect. Your devotions when you take me in your mouth again, holding me with both hands. You're so hard, you moan around me, and I want you, want to play you, want your sounds to be what I make them. I push you to the rug and on the floor we fit together like yin and yang. A long long time, idle, lazy, then intense, right to the edge, then slow again. The luxury of long time lovers. I know your body, you know mine.

On and on and on sucking licking each other. in my mouth as my eyes roam the decorations the vaulted ceilings patterned the window grids casting strange shadows, make a leopard out of you. Wild thing holy thing. I’ve never told you Robert but I think when I was a boy I dreamed of you. I was little but you were as you are now. I never could quite see you clearly, like you were always hiding in the corner of my eye, but I could hear you and I could feel you your energy and it felt like this, exactly like this. This thing of ours raging as the ocean always on the move wild and impossible to contain or tame you can only try to keep yourself afloat, but also calm like this and complete in itself. Motion is its essence and change is its nature but in its constant movement it’s quite still and eternal.

We’re side by side your cock in my hand mine in yours we’re lazy we’re hot. The call to prayer startles me and I remember your face laughing. You’re astonishing it overwhelms me you’re made of light. 

You’re sleeping now I’m still quite high. I want to remember it all. If I can hold you there right there close enough long enough you beg wordlessly, your eyes your sounds, so so beautifully. you repeat my name like a mantra - I am a state of mind. After you came so softly so long I almost didn’t have time to kiss you before you fell asleep.

Night and coolness cleared my mind somewhat and woke me up. I’ll put the pen down now and come lie beside you. The moonlight makes a desert of sand dunes out of you. I yearn for you. How is it possible to yearn for something one already has. ~~Because i dont~~

Sometimes I feel the only way I could ease this craving would be to eat you. Swallow you whole. I fear however I am the one being swallowed. 

Marrakech ... June 1975

Two boys sat down with us at the cafe. I didn’t realise it was that kind of place. Blue eyes, darker skin. Berber. Young. Sixteen, seventeen at most. Arms around each other. They were beautiful and very obvious. 

I wanted them. I looked at Robert, he returned a shrug and an “up to you” face. 

One of the kids threw an arm around him, and Robert said something and gestured at me, smiling sweetly, and the kid removed his arm without ever losing the smile. Still leaning to him, expectation. R. looked so very handsome, to be fair, very striking, so tall and blond, his arrogant stance, those princely ways. His eyes seem clearer with the tanned skin. He gives it off, he always does. Fleshly pleasures more vehemently promised in him, through him, than the lewdest, most shameless street whore. — Not quite. The holy whore at the temple.

He offered them our pipe. There was no talking. There’s nothing to talk about really. No, yes, that’s it.

There’s nothing quite like the young. Naivety, sure, but of a kind that moves mountains. It doesn’t last long, but at the right time, for that brief moment. Like Robert when I first met him. If it’s given willingly. You call but they must walk towards you on their own feet. Like Robert when I first took him. 

God-makers, first followers. One never shines so bright as one does in the eyes of the young. One can give into it and be augmented, imbued with power. The very young are open to the kind of truth adults know does not exist. And in so doing, with their faith, they can bring it to pass. 

I scorn world-weariness, maturity even, when it destroys this sort of energy. Give me the faith of the young any day, their intensity, their open minds. Not children anymore, but still able to believe like children. Even the absolutes they deal with are enchanting in that they are unbribable, self-sustaining. By their stubborn will to be they can change reality. It was never the old who changed the world.

It wouldn’t have been like that with these two boys. They were “of the life”. We’d have had no secrets for them, no revelations. We all knew why we were there. They offered up sweetly. We’re rich and beautiful so why not just go somewhere (not the hotel, there are other places for this.) I’d have liked to watch Robert with them. I would have liked for him to watch me with them. He would if I asked, but he wouldn’t like it. I can picture him already, smoking furiously, getting hard and refusing to do anything about it. 

I imagine him kicking the boys out, and take me then, still with their musk and their sweat on me. Grab me by the scruff of the neck throw me down fuck me with their seed still inside me, claim me. I’m crying. I would have wanted this. He doesn’t get it. 

I told him to ask them to go. He made no expression to me. Always smiling his sweetest smiles, Robert talked to them, gave them some money, and they left, also smiling and nodding their heads. Awfully polite and civilised.

He did say "just the two of us this time", but until now I wasn’t sure this is what he meant.

Robert’s promiscuity is quite a mystery to me. I just don’t understand him, the way he operates. It's not total anarchy, he has his own rules for this, he just doesn't share them. In this as in everything, he makes his own laws.

On the way back, we don’t talk about it. We never really have.

(Evening)

He rests, I guard his sleep.

I’m still high. So hot. I tried a gelabah on. He touched me through it. 

He touched me and I complained that it was getting stained. Wet. Just to hear him laugh and pretend I try his patience. He led me to bed and laid me down and watched me with it on. I was going to take it off for him. He held my hands, put them over my head. Stay there. Still.

He gets naked for me with intent. The baby face is all gone. That awkward pout he put on for attitude in photoshoots at the very beginning. Sweet boy, bubbly like a puppy, wanted to look grown. Look at him now. Brown in patches, but golden all over. Like bleeding Tarzan. Like an animal, naked is his natural state of being. Clothes don’t suit him, really. And the more formal the attire, the worse it looks. He’s the only man I’ve ever met whose appearance is not improved at all by a well-tailored suit. Once I told him he looked like one of those monkeys they dress up in kid’s clothes. He didn’t think it was as funny as I did.

Hovering over me, he put his face on me, he nuzzled me like an animal. It was wonderfully ticklish and maddening, not quite feeling the whole thing. The pressure, yes, the heat, but there was that veil between us. It was enticing, a slight torture. Kneeling between my splayed legs, trapping the skirt of the gelabah under his weight, so I couldn’t move my legs or escape; bound only by a slight veil of cotton. Willingly caught, then, yielding.

You’ll rip it, I said. (Rip it, rip it.)

I ask him to tie me down. It's very hard to say the words.

“No, you hold on. I want to watch you trying to hold it.” (But I want to fight it, fight you, and be defeated, I want not to have a choice and lose. I want you to make me. - If I could speak it out perhaps he wouldn't struggle so much with it. He can tell when it's a game and when it's not.)

He does what I asked, of course. He’s nothing if not generous. He uses the leather belts we bought the other day. They still reek.

A piece he bought for M, braided thongs, bound in a knot. Looks like a cat o’nine tails. He sees me watching it. Doesn’t have to hurt I tell him.

Is he high enough. “Where” he asks. I turn on my stomach.

Doesn’t have to hurt. (But hurt me.) I’m thinking about those boys. Set Robert on them while I fucking weep. Thinking of all the people he fucks when he’s not fucking me.

“Only you, only ever loved you.” You said it in your trance, you don't know I heard it.

Only ever me. Is that what you tell her too? You must tell her something. Is that it?

I nod to the would-be cat o’nine tails. The belt you bought for your wife, whip me with it. Ten lashes. Before you fuck me hard. Please, please. It doesn’t have to hurt.

And it bloody doesn’t, and I’m disappointed, and he knows. He wants to cradle me and worship me. “Make you feel good, Pagey.”

Roll me over and fuck me hard.

“Just fucking let me. Or am I boring you?” (Oh, Robert. It’s not that. It’s not that at all.)

Lifting my skirts like bloody lady Chatterley, and Robert going under, his head bulging underneath. I’m high and I can’t see him except for a vague, distorted, pale image through the thin material. Unclear. Away. A white film between us. Flimsy. You could rip it. He could rip it. Tear it down. Push through it. Send it all to hell. 

His mouth climbing up my body under the gelabah. I stare at the whitewashed ceiling. I touch him through the cotton. You but not you. I’m high.

He goes hard on me when he wants to, seldom when I ask him too. Still I like his strength. Want to feel it through the haze. Lose myself for him to find me. Mark me so I can feel him when we’re with others, so I can remember it in my body when we cannot speak of it or let it show or share it or indulge in it; feel it at least, so that I know it’s not a dream. So that I can hold on to it in the face of our other lovers.

He’s the one who has always chafed the most with this, but he’s the one who lives with it most successfully. Making the best of what there is. Me? I put on my own leash and tighten it cruelly, accept it, don’t pull at it like he does, but I eat myself inside, poke at it like a sore.

“Stay here with me, Pagey”.

Where is here.

“Here with me” he says. — And her. And everybody else.

I’m unfair. I know I am.

“You’re the only one. Only ever you.”

“Just you and me.”

Don’t be foolish, Robert.

We are alone now. We hold hands in the street. He made me twirl and turn and spin as we danced through the crowd. I laughed and people smiled at me, at my joy. Strange place. - We found it, baby. We said we would.

Is this the dream, then? Is this happiness? Wholeness? Finally having it all?

I want for nothing here, but him. It’s frightening, isn’t it. This, here, is all I need. - Robert.

I’m talking nonsense. I need many things. I need to work. My place. My things. Other people. Of course he is not all I need, of course not. 

This is a holiday. Should it last forever, I’d be as sick of it in time as he will be soon enough. He puts everything in the moment, and it flares sky high, but it burns out fast. 

When he walks away I never know if he will come back. The mystery of the quotient. So what’s my ratio. What’s my part in this. In you. In the things you need. 

I could get sick of you too. I could look beyond you.

I didn’t know you, once. I had never met you. I didn’t know you existed. When I saw you first, I didn’t know. - How could I know.

You threw yourself at me like you’d seen a crack in the door and wanted to burst it open. The promised land. Everything you ever wanted. Through me. An angel at the gate guarding the way to someplace else. It was not your dream, it was mine. You took it like you took everything I gave you.

You believed light poured from me. Through me. You drank it all up and I cut myself open to feed you more of it, and you stepped inside, seeking the source. And I took you in. You threw yourself at me. You called the music to you like lightning. I flaunted it, I preened, I showed you. I seduced you. It’s this way. It’s over here. I held your hand I took you to bed I guided you. Literally inside me. I was selfish. Robert, I was selfish. Spread myself open for you. Told you, “this is what you want. this is what you are. this is where you fit.”

A stranger comes. You don’t know yourself. In the darkness, when you’re alone, you know your worth, you believe in yourself. Out there, you doubt. People don’t get it. They listen and they don’t get it. And I say, it's them, baby, not you. The world is full of mindless sheep. They need someone to tell them what they like, what’s good and what isn’t. They need gurus. Leaders. People who can see beyond. Underneath.

I see you.

A stranger comes. He comes for you. He tells you, what you are is beautiful, what you are is a miracle, what you are blinds me delights me transports me. Turns me on. Inspires me. See what you do to me?

And he whispers in your ear like the Devil at Temptation Mountain. Look at the world. All its riches and charms. All this I will give you. – In exchange for what, though. – Oh, don’t you know? Everything. You must give me everything. Everything you got, everything you are.

You were young. You were hungry. I dazzled you. My beautiful thing, my wild thing, only starting to become. There was nothing inevitable about your becoming. You’re a work of art and craft. I made you. I told you you could do it. I told you that you were good and you were beautiful and you were what I had been looking for and I took you to bed and I let you be the man and I built you up and I made you. And you surrendered it all.

There was nothing inevitable about my becoming either. I see it now. I made you, you made me. First follower, god-maker. Every time you turned towards me -Oh Jimmy - look at him, with his music he calls on invisible powers, he holds a wisdom beyond your comprehension, he is a mystery and a sage and a wizard and not quite of this world; he is a messenger, an envoy, he sees in the darkness, he guides, he knows the truth. He stole the fire and brought it down here for us, his gift. Surrender to him. Worship him like I do. 

I see it now. Don't you see? I am a mirror for the light you cast, Robert, for the fire you started. Mirrors have no light of their own.

A stranger comes. You say you’re desperate, nowhere else to go. Liar. You knocked on my door and you were already mine. You knocked on my door and I was already yours.

I told you about the light of knowledge and the light of secrets and the light of love and I could have told you anything I wanted, with my music flowing through you. I thought how powerful I am. The great and mighty Oz. All the time, Robert, all the time, I never realised, I never thought. It flows through you and without you there is nothing. A pupil can have many masters and rise above them and take it all in and move on. A master can only ever have one perfect pupil, just one, for that's the essence of it, mastership - find perfection. Perfection is finite by definition. A master has achieved the top and there’s nowhere further to go. He can teach all he knows to his apprentice but when that's done, it's done. A pupil by nature, however, is imperfect, unfinished, that's his nature. He can always keep going, on and on and on. It’s in his nature to search. - I am condemned to lose you. Seeing eye to eye, what else have I got to give you. Have I lost you already, or haven't your realised yet. 

You kiss me and you pin me down, I was spinning so fast, spiralling out of control, up and away. You pin me down and we're not quite still but we move as one, together. I want for nothing. This is happiness. This, here. You. - I'm so afraid. 

“Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy.”

You pin me down and make love to me like I am the only one, only ever me, and the wheel that was spinning so fast grinds still and we are just you and me. This is your power - bring it down to earth and, make earth magic. And now, right now, (all the now that matters) I am not your teacher anymore. You are not my pupil. We're just two boys making love in the afternoon. Two boys who hold hands down the street, arms around each other, laughing. Happy to be together here, alone, far away from all the din, hearing ourselves just be. We’re lovers. Against everyone else, in spite of everyone else. We choose each other and we choose to be. - It doesn't get simpler or more ineffable than this.

In the morning I got up early to get us a jeep. Left a note, “wait for me.” It’s in a garage in the shade waiting for us. Tomorrow we drive south.

I saw the note between the pages of your book. Caught the hoarding bug from me, baby?

Essaouira ... July 1975

The energy is so different here by the ocean. Seaside towns just have that way about them. You can taste the salt in the air in the street. That sort of heavy intensity of inland places dispels here with the breeze. The water's green and so warm and he swims far in and I look on anxious. We play at the breakers. He dragged me between some rocks, where water was pooling, coming going coming going around our knees, the sand swallowing our feet. He kissed me. He tasted like salt, I had this bitter sensation in my throat and his hands on my arms were cold but his tongue was like fire. Again, at that moment I didn't really feel all that it was. All I could think of was people seeing. Not quite scared just, annoyed. I hope I didn't spoil it for him by not being adequately dramatic about it.

I think about it now and I want to go back there and hold him and kiss him again, give him all that he wanted it to be. I don't feel it quite like him. But it matters to him and it's easy enough for me. I hope I didn't spoil it.

Essaouira ... July 1975

He’s constantly scribbling. I know not to ask or interrupt. But I like to watch him. He can light on and off and people don’t know that. M too I guess. For the rest, he’s always on. It’s sort of a privilege for me, I suppose. I used to think he was easy to know. One quite gets the impression that he puts it all out there. Until one looks back and thinks, have I ever seen him sad? Properly blue, low? Has he ever needed me to cheer him up? Sometimes he feels quite unassailable and out of reach. It rather frightens me. It rather seems he doesn’t need anyone.

I ought not let my thoughts just scamper like that. I ought to know better.

Agadir ... July 1975

We’ll be leaving soon. I am forlorn. Vastly more than other times. It doesn't feel like the end of a holiday. It's different. We’ve had many weeks I suppose, waking up together, spending all our time together, going to sleep in the same bed every night until we’ve become accustomed to it. Until we make nothing of it. We’ve had time to get bored together and I’ve had time to watch him away from everyone, where he can put down the many faces he seduces and beguiles and charms every person he meets, and just be my Robert. Is that your real face, or is it a mask too?

These days I’ve sometimes felt like I have seen him the way he will be one day. Calmer, more serene. Reflective. His light dimmer, but constant. I know it is a privilege, to be invited into his inner sanctum and offered a place here. I know he feels something similar for me, that he’s the lucky one. Still a follower, still an acolyte, after so many years.

Seven years. We've had this seven years. Are we closer to the end than we are to the beginning? Seems absurd to think otherwise. Forever is not real, not natural. Not for me, not for him.

We should have ended a long time ago, but we didn't. In fact I love him more than ever. – Even writing it here is an effort of will. It's ridiculous. But he never says it, so I don’t. – I would. I just don’t want witticism in response.

He is my only one. I’m not his. I must share him with all his other lives. Persephone to my Hades. I fed him my pomegranate seeds but did he swallow them?

“One has to have a base, Pagey,” he says. He means family, he means a home. I wasn’t made for that. Neither is he. I think he knows that, but he just has to make it work. - He wants it all. Must make everyone happy. I suppose it’s up to us to decide if we take it or leave it, if we shall be made happy by his efforts.

Not that I can decide. If he comes to me, I am happy, whether I like it or not.

I would put it all to one side for him, forever. I’d have Robert, the band, the life, nothing else. On and on and on. I’d be thrilled to. It would be no sacrifice.

I too want it all. It’s just, my all and his all mean different things.

Seven years. We should have ended. We have I suppose, and we got back. What does that mean, looking ahead.

I would like it to be forever. I have never felt this before. That in itself is a terror.

He scares me. I scare myself.

He soothes me. “Only you. Only ever you.”

Agadir, ... July 1975

I wish he’d come to Sicily with me.

I haven’t asked, but he said on the phone to M when I could hear him that he’s been far away from her and the kids so long as he looked at me softly. Trying to square the circle, as is his way. At least he didn't say “too long."

I do wonder if they ever talk about me, R and her, but I’ll never ask about it. I wonder if he’d make excuses for me. If he’d try to paint a sympathetic picture. “Poor Jimmy.” 

I do very much doubt he would tell her that I feel the wronged party in this, in his name. That I resent every minute he’s away from me, from the life he should have, from our music. Because it’s a rare and extraordinary gift he’s been blessed with, and he should devote himself and his time entirely to it. If you don’t give it enough, it can be taken away. - Perhaps she agrees with me to an extent. It can’t be said he gets a hard time of it, does he? - Does anybody ever give him a hard time. I suppose we all learn soon enough it's to no avail. He really has no time for it.

In any case, I believe R’s curiosity in some of my other pursuits was tempered by our visit to the temple. The big mystery was revealed and it turns out "it was love all along", or something like that I suppose. Of course there is no point trying to explain that it is much more complicated than that, but in any case, I’ve been on this path alone for a long time and I don’t feel a great need to bring anyone along with me. Besides, you can't be enrolled into this. You must seek it out.

Then again, Robert may not understand, or want to, but intuitively he walks this path too. The very essence of it, the beginning and end of it, with no nuance or study perhaps, but stronger and clearer and practiced without effort, without strain - Love is the law. Love under will. That is Robert's law too. That's Robert. But Robert's love is not at all like all that healing hippy flower rubbish, even if he thinks so. Robert's love can break you in half. Not one with all things, but all things unto him. Some will call it ego, but only if you mistake the force of gravity for ego. Robert can no more contain or subdue what he is and how he lives than the storm can decide its strength and how much it will destroy in its path. And it would be a pity that he did attempt to curb it, as it would be that we could pray storms to cease. A safer life perhaps, but is living about being safe?

  
  


He's given me me the poetry books he’s been carting around in his bag all the way from England. A token to remember him by, or something. They’re invaluable in their own right, quite old, and very rare. English translations of classic Arabic writers, he says, are difficult to come by. He had some bookhunters dig them up for him in old libraries across the land. I’ve never heard him take so many pains over something like this. (If sending minions to do your bidding is taking pains anyway.)

I’ve watched him read them pencil in hand. The first time I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was going to snatch them off him, to stop him from defacing them further. He thought it quite amusing and ignored me. But what was I supposed to say. What could I do. He had paid for them. I must have said something like that. - He said "just because you pay for them doesn't mean you own them." He pointed at his scribbles and markings. "Now I own them. You can see where I am in them, where they speak for me. Now you can know us both, the book and me." - Or something of the sort. He was high, obviously. I wasn't stoned enough to find any sense in any of those bollocks but whatever could I do.

After I perused them I suppose I got his meaning. Not that I will tell him that.

I will not presume he underlined these passages for any other reason than a poet appreciating another poet’s skill, just like I will never presume any of the lyrics he writes are about me, for fear of disappointment, but surely I can allow myself to hear them in his voice, can’t I? 

(This is all awfully sentimental, and if I should ever read these pages again I will surely be mortified, but never mind, these matters tend to be. Sentimental, that is. And I can’t allow myself a bit of this here, then where.) - To think of him reading these lines and thinking of me is a strange notion. Just thinking about me when I am not there. Missing me, perhaps, or remembering this and that. Or just reflecting. About us. And me. - I suppose he must, of course he must. Don't I? But I'd never thought about it. - I imagine it now, I see him now, looking out a window with my face or my words on his mind and it moves me beyond words. (Seven years and still a schoolgirl's crush. Mercy.)

  
  
  


______ 

_“When he, brought up in luxury, appeared, his face was naked, bare of blemish, while he was clad in clothes of seduction._

_He was unique and said: This is my share of the world and its pleasures._

_And God, when he created him, created him as a moon and a sand dune at the base of a twig._

_Now the moon sways on top of a twig, and the twig on top of a sand-hill.”_

_“He is a wild one:_

_But were he to pass in darkness_

_Black as a forelock,_

_His blazing face would suffice him light. So if I stray for the night_

_In his black locks_

_His brow, bright moon_

_Will give guidance to my eyes.”_

_“A full moon whose skill as a painter has ascended, he provides every creature with its counterpart._

_He paints everything on earth with its beauty, but he’s incapable of painting his own beauty.”_

_“On the battle ground_

_Between hearts and glances_

_I am slain_

_Without sin or guilt.”_

__________________

_Rhodes, … August 1975_

We’re meeting Ch and M and the children and the rest tomorrow. We were sorting out our things. Up until now it was just more practical to carry it all together, but now we had to pick what was his and what was mine. The symbolism wasn’t lost on either of us. The mood is glum, but still he finds it in himself to make jokes about it all. I hardly find it in myself to laugh. - He's already looking at tomorrow. "Next time we'll go here and there and we'll see this and that." All I can think of is, it's over.

I saw him go through his notebooks, tear off a few pages, put away some, chuck some. I was horrified. I cried out - how can you do this? He said they were nothing, just impressions, drabbles, not unlike my warming up exercises; that he’d never look at them again; that he couldn’t possibly keep all the chuff he wrote, or he’d be swamped in it. He said of course he was tempted to keep them, of course he was, but he’d already saved what needed to be saved, he said. That we had the memories, the photos. He laughed, “we already have your diaries.” 

He just finds it too easy to get rid of things for my understanding. They’re dead stuff to him, empty carcasses, and "what matters is what you carry with you in your heart" or any old rubbish of the sort.

Needless to say, we disagree on that as much as is humanly possible. I understand what he means, but it’s all bollocks to me.

Many things are worthless, indeed, have no meaning and no voice. But others do. They are not dead, or empty, not at all. Not the kind of thing I mean. The kind of things I am talking about have immense power. And they can and do outlive any emotion, any life, any love. In the end, things are all that’s left.

I’ll still have these pages with me when he’s gone. These I will never lose.

  
  


* * *

(Robert) 

It was an April morning when they told us we ~~had to~~ should go

I turned to you and you smiled at me

How could we say no?

Oh, the fun we’ll to have

We’ll live the dreams we’ve always had

Oh the songs to sing

When we at last return again

~~Blowing~~ Slipping off a glancing kiss

To those who ~~think~~ claim they know

Below the streets that steam and hiss

The devil's in his hole

Into the sun, the south, the north

At last ~~these~~ the birds have flown

The shackles of commitment fell

In pieces on the ground

_____

As you go East cities and towns and people thin down, all around red mud. Not sand dunes, rock. Wide open spaces, empty, nobody around, just dust. Then a line of nomads on camels. Like a motion picture. Like traveling back in time. I am exhilarated. 

Driving on and on and on. Heat, mirages. Nothing to do. Dozy. Like drone music. Like a trance. 

The glaring sun scorches the earth, has burned it mercilessly for thousands of years.

We took a detour to get closer to the mountains. I didn’t want to get to the city yet, though a citadel of mud! 

______

We seek the man whose pointing hand

 ~~A the~~ giant step unfolds

With guidance from the curving ~~path~~ road

 ~~Churning~~ That churns up into stone

_____

We stopped by the roadside. We lit up a small fire. We ate flatbread, almonds, dates. We even made a pot of tea. It was awful. But the simplicity of it, how very basic and essential, and how beautiful. It’s a miracle that there are still spots like this on earth. Time does not exist here. In a way, this is no place. We were about the only things for miles and miles around that were born and live and die. We didn’t talk, we just looked around us and each other. These silences are everything.

I watched him stare at the flames for a long time. He was still, but the fire made his eyes dance. The flames had him all flustered. Gorgeous thing.

Sometimes he will catch me mooning and he can’t help but turn shy on me, and it always breaks my heart for some reason. I thought you could always feel such tenderness, and so much of it, for your own children. When did I start feeling like this? Once I wouldn’t have dreamed of it. But it overwhelms me now, and I feel rather helpless, what to do with all this I feel? I believe I was to hug him in those times I would crush him.

The stars are so bright here, they cast a shadow. The silence is like being on the surface of the moon. He sent all the instruments to England but for one of the sintirs. I’m not quite sure why this one is his favourite, and I want to find out without him telling me, so I don’t ask about it. In the moonlight he’s quite unearthly, he spins his gold and light and magic out of thin air, my sorcerer, my witch. The sound of the strings in this vast open space is like nothing else I've ever heard. There's a purity to it, a sharpness, unforgiving. Sounds like the truth. Truths: Hundreds of them. There is no lie here, there cannot be. Rocks and earth and sky are beyond them. There is only Jimmy and me. - I never lie to you Jimmy. I never will. We may not tell each other everything but this core deep within, what we really are, it has its own laws, like the wilderness here, and no lie is possible. True and real come to mean the same thing. - No-one to lie to, and no-one to hide from. True and real and seen. Out here in the world, in the light. As it should be.

No-one to see us either, because when you make this kind of deals there is always the small print. You called it an illusion, a mirage. Perhaps. Perhaps that's all we get. Perhaps this is how we manage to have our cake and eat it.

The light doesn't mean the same to you as it does to me. You feel it's childish, I believe, this urge of mine to have it out, so to speak. Or naive, perhaps. "What is the point? You know and I know. Isn't that all that matters?" - I don't know, Jimmylove. I know what you mean. You speak and I see reason and I nod and I shrug it off. But a moment later it's nagging at me again. So I don't know, Jimmy. I know you have a point, but I don't know that this is all that matters.

_____

I wanted him naked, glistening, like pearls in the starlight, so white. On top of me, dance Jimmy, dance. He says if I look up into the sky I feel like I’m falling into it. I watch him reach up with his skinny arms, and I hold his hips, and I make him dance. Green eyes like a snake. Skinny boy, skinny boy. Feels like I could break you. Hold yourself up so I can fuck into you. Your face is closer like that. Your beautiful face, in the starlight. Angel. Messenger. Light bringer. Gate keeper. You’re my way through. Nobody can hear us here, baby. Sing for me. Scream it out. Whisper. Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy. Rocks sharp underneath. I don’t mind, I feel everything. Come to me my love. Stay with me here now. 

___

And God, when he created him, created him as a moon and a sand dune at the base of a twig.

Now the moon sways on top of a twig, and the twig on top of a sand-hill.

____________

The kasbah. A city built of mud. Every door open. A shadowed hall, cool and welcoming. Packed earth floors dressed with rich, worn down rugs, priceless antiquities nibbled at the fringes. We sit down with them to eat around a tagine with chicken, vegetables, couscous, flatbread. Steaming and lovely. The spices so rich.

Jimmy asks me to ask what to see, where to go. He looks boyish, his smile shy, guileless. Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile that this is the same man who commands tens of thousands from a stage. He’s so immense there, and so slight here. Skinny boy, like swaying reeds. How can you be both? Which one are you?

_________________

Jimmy said, before anyway, that it’s something we did not something we are… Sometimes I think the more he talks in words the less I understand him. But in here, it feels as if doing and being is the same. It’s so hard to explain - it was like the thing that calls me in the music - that place in my belly that I can always feel since I first met him, I have lived a life where I had to every day put that feeling aside and here I didn’t have to do that anymore… 

There are some other things. Jimmy doesn’t even know and we don’t talk about it. It’s like we don’t want it to get faded by the sun because we are so used to guarding it… it’s not something I thought, it’s something I know in my body. At times he panics and he second guesses himself so much - but some of the things we’ve gone through, been to, places, spiritual places. I know we are bound together forever - and we had said it before but we had not let the noise die down so we could go there with each other. Like Bron-Yr-Aur. Jimmy said the hard part is not going up the mountain, it’s coming back down afterwards - but my magic is the Welsh hills, it’s soft really. Here we’re up in the clouds and it’s like being able to climb up into heaven with him and I’m not ready to come back down yet.

__________

We sail away

To sandy lands and other days

To touch the dream

That hides inside and never seen

_______

Closed orchards and gardens surrounded by red mud walls with the green and blood orange shade of the pomegranate tree blossoms poking above, the fruits still only buds starting to swell. Cane and palm leaf shelters on planks of wood and rugs, always in the shade. Jasmine vines cover and surround them, the scent so strong when the evening falls. Date palms. Eden.

___

We laugh aloud

Dancing as we fought the crowds

___

The mighty arms of Atlas

Hold the heavens from the earth

__

A waterfall in the middle of the desert. In England, it wouldn’t even warrant a name. In here they come see it from miles around. Like ourselves. The gulps of green so unexpected, and so much brighter for it. 

We eat dates in the shade of some big boulders, we have sticky lips and sweet tongues. 

Some men come to us, from out of nowhere it seems, but I can’t understand their accent. The men seem to understand me, or maybe they’re just kind. They smile a lot, they’re missing half their teeth, the rest a dirty yellow. Skin like leather. Bright brown eyes. Looks like they might have been roaming this place for centuries, even longer. Spirits rather than real men.

_________

If something happened to us here, we’d be gone without a trace. Nobody would ever find us. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On and on and on, Jimmy and me.

  
  


_______

  
  


It feels like this exactly where we should be and what we should be doing. I just feel like all the things I wanted to say when I first fell in love with him, he didn’t want me to say - he wanted it to all go into the work because I think he thought he could only have part of me. I recently heard him say things he didn’t think I was going to hear, but I think maybe he wanted me to. I have been his lover all these years and he still makes me lose the ability to breathe. I am just with him sometimes and I feel whole. I feel holy. I feel like we will be on this journey together forever. I feel really loved. I feel cherished. I feel the things that people sing in spirituals and in the local songs here they say are to god. I feel full of him, of us. I could always feel him - in me - ha - but I feel full of him the way people talk about being filled with the spirit in a baptist church. I’m not putting him above me - it’s just that love is holy - all the love I have - but the love I have with Jimmy is special and that is what I was trying to see if I could write down. To be honest though I think it is better in my songs.

Jimmy tried to teach me to find god, or gods, or angels. I just found him waiting for me, and he wasn’t any different to how he is in this ordinary life. My life is blessed. I mean I was never going to give up looking for this life. But I already have the dream I dreamed right? So what could change that? I can’t imagine - and that’s happiness right?

______

Wandering and wandering

What place to rest the search?

The mighty arms of Atlas

Hold the heavens from the earth

______

I know the way, I know the way

  
  
  
  


* * *

Jimmy closes the book. 

There are many blank pages in the last diary. He stopped writing at all, for a long time. As for the final entries, he’s not looked at them again, at all. Stuff he wrote when Robert had already had the accident, but before Jimmy was told. A nightmarish gap. How very odd. Carrying on with your life simply because you haven’t been told that the world has ended. 

This sounds rather overdramatic now, but that’s the advantage of hindsight, nothing more. There was nothing certain in those days. Robert could well have died. He almost did. And Jimmy had nothing to do with his survival. It all happened beyond him, away from him. In that moment that changed everything for Robert, and therefore, for him, he wasn’t there. How can one’s life happen so far away from one. 

Robert broke more than his legs. He broke his wings. He was struck down. And so was Jimmy. We were never fearless anymore. Ever since, Robert’s felt death at his heels. And since that time, he’s waited for no-one.

That's when it started. The end. We could not know it then, but it’s quite clear now. True, you returned to me and to the life we knew, but it was never the same. We thought we led a fast life before, but the first years until that moment stand apart now as a whole life time, and what came after, a fading coda, gone in a blink. And I missed most of it. I was hiding from the pain and the fear, running, running, running. But when you do it, you create tomorrow, life springs under your feet, you move from one you to the next. When I did it, my world was dying. And I was dying. And I died, in a way. A part of me, for sure.

I’ve heard it said that childhood ends when we understand that we must die. For a long time what were you, but a man-child who wanted it all, both the high life of a rock star and your farm, juggling lovers and family. Both these people and both these lives were a costume, a pretense, you were neither. You had no idea who you were, I see it now. You couldn’t hear yourself with all the noise. You had to regain your children’s trust when you returned from far and away. Of course there was a reckoning. 

As for me, my sin, as it always is, was greed. I had almost lost you, and I wanted you near more than ever. I wanted us back on the road, in the studio, in the crowd. Pretend nothing had happened, just go on. I thought, the music is our truth, that’s where we’ll find ourselves again, that’s where we’ll be safe.

You made it easy for me, you came willingly. You sought refuge in me because you had your own guilt to carry. I gave you an out and you took it. And then you resented me for it. What a rude awakening to one of the many powers you had granted me over you. 

You once said in anger that I left you first. I don’t make a big deal of it, I know you were hurting; but I think about it. I don’t know what I replied then, maybe nothing. I was quite numb, wasn’t I? For such a long time.

Don’t be angry, my love. I was losing everything. I was losing myself. The wheel of the seasons was turning on us, our world was changing around us. I was staring at the long cold winter in the face. We would hold it back for some time, but I knew, and you must have known too, that it was inevitable. 

A day lasted years. All color was gone from the world all taste all scent. Nothing could touch me and everything hurt me and killed me. Couldn’t heal it couldn’t make it right couldn’t change a thing. I couldn’t breathe for the pain. All I could do was hide.

I didn’t want to make it. I wasn’t supposed to make it. I never thought I would. It was supposed to be me, not John.

I didn’t leave you, my love. I simply stood still, clutching to my chest in vain all the things that were slipping between my fingers. I wanted to stay at that summit we’d conquered together, but you had already started to climb down the other side. I turned around and I could still see you there, but you weren’t looking at me, and I was alone. 

I watched you walk away. I didn’t know where you were going, I couldn’t follow you. You didn’t want me there. From the heights you had reached, you looked around you and saw this wasn’t it. The dream I once gave you, it wasn’t your dream. Not anymore. Not after what happened. You started to look beyond. 

You were too scared at first, too insecure. You believed your wings were borrowed. But you’re nothing if not ballsy. You’d take the plunge sooner or later, and sink or swim. Or rather, step off the cliff, borrowed wings or not. If you soared, it didn’t matter where they came from. If you fell, then it mattered even less. 

It all fell apart and still, I lived. A demi-life, an iron age where we had known an age of gold. It was an ugly time, without magic, without power, without legends. The world had turned ordinary, mundane, shallow, colourless, meaningless, and I walked, but the path was leading nowhere. There were no peaks ahead, how could there be. We’d walked on the roof of the earth, we’d touched the skies. From the heights we’d known what is there but a long, long way down. All there was - short bursts of pleasure in performing, if you’re wasted enough to forget what you’ve known, what you’ve been -that he is not there beside you, singing to you, loving you; if you ignore everything but the music and the crowd. 

I thought, any day now. I thought, surely it will happen now.

But there was to be no glorious tragic death. No Viking funeral. No Valhalla for me. You simply would not have it. You had left, but you kept coming back. There’s a whole world out there you said. There’s always the music you said. There’s the journey. 

And the love. That, too, had come down from the Olympian heights we’d known, and it only stood six feet above the ground. As if we’d woken up from a marvelous dream to a reality of small things, small words, small people, small pleasures. And our love was small too, human scaled, but so very stubborn. It refused to die.

You were not the golden god anymore, just a man. And so was I. Not two gods in love, just people. You were fine with being just people. And you rambled and you traveled far but then you came back to me again, every time. You linger on and on, you said. I never knew what to do about that. From looking up to me, to looking level into my eyes, to picking me up like a child and try to protect me and nourish me. I was a ruin, and still you loved me. And I never struggled more to believe it, and it never felt more real.

_I’m so proud of him_ , you said, _Emphasis on the ‘him’_ (you cheeky bugger.) _He was spectacular,_ you said. _I wept,_ you said. 

_Come home with me_ , you said. _You’re the only one,_ you said. - We can't, I said.

(Please, stay away, I told you not long ago.)

Love and desire come and go. What we were does not. Carved in rock - etched in vinyl, and singing still, with other people’s voices. We are legend, our love is legend. People we’ll never meet sing about it around the bonfires of the modern age. Our truth will be lost, but in what we did, they will find their own. Unlike Achilles and Patroclus, we got to write our own song. 

To that wretched man I was once, for those long, dark years, I would say, wait. Wait and see. See that gold spark on the horizon? That’s where you’ll find him. He waits for you there, many years from now. You’ll meet again. And you’ll go back to that place. You’ll have it all back. You’ll heal. A second season for you and him. The wheel of fortune never stops turning. So hold on and look ahead, where he waits for you already. -Legend has it, he’s still waiting.

_It's the last chance our hearts will dance into the lover's night._

Goddammit, Robert.

**Author's Note:**

> You may have noticed Jimmy's voice changes a lot. I tried to imitate his writing and talking style in some entries (the most self-aware and sober ones) and I go to town and just fuck it in others, when he's high or when he's let loose. 
> 
> As for Robert's entry, Ledbythreads wrote some of it, his most reasoned thoughts. I wanted his voice to be very different and there it is.
> 
> * There is photographic evidence of Jimmy meeting William R. Burroughs, a queer writer, famously addicted to stuff too, author of "Queer" among many others, who could very well have told Jimmy about Morocco. Morocco was at the time well known in the gay community as a safe(ish) haven where sexual tourism possible, and drugs readily available. The playwright Joe Orton also wrote about it. If there was a place for Robert and Jimmy to seek some of that freedom they sing so much about, Morocco was a good place to start.
> 
> * I've been to some of the places featured here, many years ago. It's as beautiful as you can possibly imagine.


End file.
